1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method of charging a nonaqueous electrolytic battery, particularly an electrolyte synthetic manganese black/lithium battery and also relates to a preferable apparatus for carrying out the charging method.
2. Description of the Related Art
As known in the art, a primary battery generally cannot be changed because, for example, an alkali battery may leak its contents or burst and a lithium battery may cause a serious accident such as explosion or fire when being charged. This accident may be caused by poor reversibility of oxidation-reduction of the electrolyte manganese black, which acts as the positive pole active material, and in the case of the lithium battery (or an alloy thereof), there exists dendrite, which causes serious accidents.
Reviewing Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 52-94049 disclosing a silver primary battery, it has been taught that a predetermined microelectric power for charging does not cause serious accidents during charging/discharging. The applicant already understands about several materials regarding several combinations of the primary or storage battery and a solar battery, for example, a combination of air/zinc battery and a solar battery (Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 53-78032) as lithium storage battery, a combination of activated charcoal/lithium alloy storage battery and a solar battery (Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 61-91883), a combination of a chargeable lithium battery and a sonar battery (Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 61-294769), and a combination of a lithium battery (MoS.sub.2 /Li-Al alloy in all embodiment) and a solar battery applied into a camera (Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 63-91641).
It is common that in a camera requiring relatively large electric power, for a flash, for example, a lithium battery is used. Recently, there is a tendency to use a solar battery instead of regular battery.
Referring to Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 63-91641, the combination of the lithium battery and the solar battery modified to be used in the camera is explained. However, it can not obtain enough electric power from the solar battery which is used in the camera since it is naturally small in size. The lithium storage battery as a chargeable lithium battery is known to leak a lot of electric power which can not
Although the lithium primary battery is known as not leaking electric power dendrite may be present which may cause the battery to catch fire when being charged, as mentioned above. Therefore, the lithium battery should be considered a replaceable type of battery.